Men really need to stop calling women crazy – The Washington Post.

Hi Constance…this is such a great article, for reasons you would expect…and wow did it hit me hard!  See, back in the old days when I was still diligently trying to adhere to the societal role my body’s biology sentenced me to, I would continually get called over-sensitive, over-emotional, crazy, clingy, etc. etc.

This would be anytime that I would express myself about something that I cared deeply about, and especially anytime that I was talking about something I didn’t like.  You have no idea the pretzel state I would get myself into before hand, seeking for some way some how to say what I thought like other “men” and somehow get the same reaction they got:  respect.

And then, any protest I made to defend myself was proof that I was guilty as charged!  Any holding back and not comment was me getting silenced and policed, and put in my place…gosh, even back then I was getting treated according to who I really am and not the role I was forced into.

Constance, I suffered under the worst of both roles, and was denied the best.

I think this article is worthy of reblogging, because the assumption is so deep!  We women even do it to one another all the time, and we need to assert that we can indeed be rational and emotional at the same time!  It is not like God making a rock so big They cannot lift it!

Key quote:

“Crazy” is such a convenient word for men, perpetuating our sense of superiority. Men are logical; women are emotional. Emotion is the antithesis of logic. When women are too emotional, we say they are being irrational. Crazy. Wrong.

Women hear it all the time from men. “You’re overreacting,” we tell them. “Don’t worry about it so much, you’re over-thinking it.” “Don’t be so sensitive.” “Don’t be crazy.” It’s a form of gaslighting — telling women that their feelings are just wrong, that they don’t have the right to feel the way that they do. Minimizing somebody else’s feelings is a way of controlling them. If they no longer trust their own feelings and instincts, they come to rely on someone else to tell them how they’re supposed to feel.

Small wonder that abusers love to use this c-word. It’s a way of delegitimizing a woman’s authority over her own life.